


Reliquary

by Sildae



Category: Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-30
Updated: 2017-05-30
Packaged: 2018-11-04 22:16:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,320
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11000127
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sildae/pseuds/Sildae
Summary: Echo had never realized how patient a man his brother was.





	Reliquary

So far, Osirus V was Echo’s favorite rock out of all the piles of dirt he’d been dropped on.

It was a picturesque beauty, as lush as Onderan and mountainous as Alderaan, with forests of yellow-leafed trees that twisted in spirals high over his head and flocks of tiny, red-breasted repto-avians, their thin-fleshed wings a bright green against the cloud-striped sky.

For this mission, it’d just been long-distance reconnaissance; just a standard study to keep an eye out for certain Separatist corporations, who were sure to sniff out minerals on remote Republic worlds where they had no business being.

So far, the suspects were a no show. Zey wanted him to stick close to the ground, regardless, which meant Echo would have to try his hand at snares again. A man had to eat more than pack rations for an extended mission, and several of the planet’s small mammals looked plump and meaty enough to make the attempt.

But Fives had always been better at the hunt.

For some reason, the thought of his brother left him oddly bereft.

Through the underbrush, he caught a flash of light on water, then an expanse of high, white cliffs beyond. A moment later, he recognized the dark bulk of a familiar silhouette and the sound of a deep, tuneless hum over the crackle of a fledgling fire.

By the time Echo slipped out of the tree line, to where his ARC brother knelt at the side of a crude spit, Fives was singing, his voice low and careless, the words in Mando but not the dialect Echo remembered passed down from his other brothers.

Fives must’ve picked it up from the Concordia group; he’d spent a month infiltrating that mess, making sure Death Watch hadn’t stooped to scrounging among the Separatists again for extra firepower. They hadn’t, but Fives had nothing good to say about them, either, by the time he made it back to Coruscant.

Echo carefully stepped on a branch. The resultant crack sent the other ARC whirling around, deece in hand. It took Fives only a quarter second to spot him, even with the late evening shadows pooling along the forest’s edge and Echo still enmeshed in low branches.

The grin that spread across his brother’s face, however, was unexpectedly wide. “Took you long enough, _ad'ika_.”

Echo studied his brother; for some reason, Fives had pulled off his upper armor and stacked it close to his bedroll. It wasn’t like Fives to go without full-body plating outside of the barracks. “You’re in a good mood.”

Fives actually laughed and gestured expansively at the creek and the cliffs, the forest and the sunset-tinged sky, as if they weren’t on a mission and this was all just a civvie campout. “Look at this place.”

Echo glanced around dutifully. “Yeah, it’s nice.”

Fives snorted and tossed him a cloth-wrapped bundle. “If you want dinner, you can scoop it up yourself.” He gestured for the creek at his back, then knelt back to his spit, turning two fat, oblong fish, blackened and—from the salty smell of them—delicious. “These things are kinda furry, but make good eating.”

Echo stared at his brother, then at the contents of the bundle. A line of flimsy-thin plas-rope and a pouch of well-cleaned hooks reflected the pink light of the setting sun. After a moment, he shrugged and hooked the line.

It didn’t take long before the first of Osirus’ moons rose and Echo was wolfing down his own _yopyn_ -fish, every bit of it hot and savory and oddly buttery. It was the best meal he’d had in ages.

“Took you long enough to get here,” Fives finally said, after he’d spent a good ten minutes teasing Echo on his cooking techniques.

Echo glanced sharply at his brother and swallowed a too-hot mouthful. “It was just five klicks from the recon site.”

Fives snort of laughter, this time, was soft. “Five klicks,” he repeated, scraping his fork across his plate before tucking it next to the fire, never one to clean his dish first. “Yeah.”

Echo hesitated, then let his fork drop with a clatter. “What’s up with you, brother?”

Fives glanced at him, eyebrows raised. “What d'you mean?”

Echo gestured to Fives’ bodysuit and the open fire, the stacked armor and the deeces propped well out of arm’s reach. “You going soft or something? Need me to read you a reg manual for a bedtime story?”

“Fek, no.” Fives’ laugh was loud and echoed off the cliffs. “Had plenty enough of that to last me.”

“Then what’s up with you?”

It took the other ARC a long time to answer, long enough that the second moon peeked above the cliffs and flashed bright across the stream’s rippled surface.

“You ever talk to a Jedi about the Force?”

Of all the things Echo expected Fives to lead off with, that wasn’t it. “Can’t say I have, no.”

Fives leaned forward, elbows propped on his knees. “I have. A few times, at least. Interesting stuff, even if it didn’t always make a lot of sense.” He shrugged. “Guess you had to be one to really get it.”

Echo easily understood that; non-clone personnel didn’t understand the bonds of brotherhood between the _vod_ , either.

“But one thing sh— _they_ said,” Fives went on, catching himself, interestingly enough, “was that after everyone died, you became part of the Force again. Like, everything that makes us unique, y'know—" He paused, arms gesturing at himself, head down. “—makes us more than—than just metal or programming—goes back into the—the Force and basically gets run through life again.”

“So, a cyclical relationship?” That also seemed logical, similar to any typical cycle, as natural as the life and death of a star or just the changing of the seasons on a temperate planet like this one.

“Yeah. It makes sense, right?”

“…Right.” It did, but that wasn’t answering Echo’s question.

Fives, though, was studying Echo, his brow furrowed and an unusually thoughtful expression on his face. Echo knew to be wary of that expression.

“How’d you get that?” Fives asked, in a subject change that threw Echo completely.

“Wh—what?”

Fives gestured at the side of his own head, but his focus was on Echo’s. “That—that cybernetic.”

The plate dropped from Echo’s hands to the stones at his feet, both hands feeling the sides of his close-cropped scalp. And there, along the left side—a bulging, metallic case, cool to the touch and joined seamlessly to his skin—and to the skull beneath.

A chill ran across his arms, his chest, his throat and twisting gut, sharp and needling as a plasma burn.

_Gods, hells_ —No.

Pressure pulled at his lungs—he felt the ground shift beneath his feet—all fading into a blinding pain of loss and lost—

“Echo.”

Fives’ hand was heavier than the pressure. Echo blinked, reoriented himself; once again, there was the chuckling stream and the forest and the high cliffs, all washed in bright moonlight.

He was here. This was real.

And there wasn’t any pain—not like he knew there should be—

_Oh._

And Fives—Fives had been waiting—

But Echo realized what else Fives waited for—what curled inside himself, too; patient, maybe tenuous, yet undeniable, stronger than any pain, any loss, any unending hell of the battlefields they’d known.

His brother was at peace.

Fives stood suddenly, stretched his arms over his head, then bounced on the balls of his feet. “C'mon,” he said. “Third moon is almost up. I bet we could find Hevy before full moonrise. And I have a brother you should meet—name’s Tup. He’s—he’s a good soldier.”

Echo watched his brother don his distinctive armor, chestplate and vambraces, pauldron and kama, all of it as familiar and comfortable as a second skin.

Echo stood, too, leaving his plate next to Fives’.

“I’d like that.”

* * *

_fin._


End file.
